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Gliding Over All
|next = |writer = Moira Walley-Beckett |director = Michelle MacLaren}} "Gliding Over All" is the eighth episode of the fifth season of Breaking Bad and the fifty-fourth episode altogether. It is also the mid-season finale. Teaser Walt sits alone in his office, observing a fly when Todd enters and confirms that he has disposed of Mike's car. He and Walt go to the garage where they open Walt's trunk, uncovering Mike's corpse. Walter says that he doesn't want to talk about it when suddenly the garage door opens. Todd closes the trunk. Jesse enters, asking if Walt met with Mike, and if Mike got the money. Walt says that Mike is gone, then quickly ushers Jesse out of the garage. The door descends between them. Summary At prison, Dennis Markowski and his lawyer try to pitch a plea deal to Hank, who laughs and refuses the greedy offer. "It's a buyer's market," he says as he leaves to go try and get a better deal from another former associate of Gus Fring. At a coffee shop, Lydia defensively refuses to give Walt the names of Mike's guys, the incarcerated "legacy" men, and the now-incarcerated lawyer who paid the legacy families using bank deposit boxes. Walt agrees to partner with her on a new business plan to sell Blue Sky in the Czech Republic where purity of meth is 60% compared to Walt's 99%, using Lydia's trusted associates on various levels at Madrigal Electromotive. After negotiating a 30% commission of their joint business, Lydia gives Walt the names and he agrees to take care of this loose end. Walt brought the ricin capsule to the meeting but does not use it after accepting Lydia's offer. Walt meets with Todd's uncle Jack and his associates. They discuss the logistics of killing 10 inmates in two minutes at three different prisons. The leader expresses the difficulty to Walt who replies, "You figure it out. It's what I'm paying you for." The next day, Walt paces around his dining room watching the seconds pass on his new watch. In the prisons, Mike's lawyer Wachsberger and the nine "legacy" members of Gus' Drug Empire are shanked, strangled, or burned alive. Hank is pulled from a photoshoot with a group of schoolgirls by Gomez and given the news. Three days later, Hank and Walt share a drink at Hank's house and Hank reminisces about his first job as a tree tagger. He wonders if that job was better than his current job Hank describes as "chasing monsters." Walt and Todd resume cooking meth and deliver shipments to Declan's driver and to Lydia who ships it to the Czech Republic. They perform several cooks in various houses undergoing pest control treatments over a period of three months, while Skyler continues to launder the drug proceeds and Saul watches the wires. During a visit to her children at Marie's, Skyler watches as Holly takes her first assisted steps and Marie makes a comment to Skyler that she and Hank feel they might be "enabling" her family. She suggests to Skyler that it might be time for she and Walt to reunite with the children at their own home, to continue to heal as a family. Later that night, Skyler takes Walt to a storage unit she has rented, shows him a gigantic pile of cash that she has created out of his drug proceeds, having been unable to launder or count it all, and pleads to have her children back home and her life back as she shows him all that he has accomplished. Walt goes to the hospital for his routine MRI. After his scan he visits the bathroom where he washes his hands and notices the paper towel dispenser he punched in "4 Days Out". Then he drops by Jesse's home after not being able to reach him by phone. In a tense interchange in which Jesse is distrustful of Walt's intentions, they manage to reminisce about their old RV which Jesse had coined "The Crystal Ship." As Walt turns to leave he tells Jesse, "I left you something." Jesse hesitantly edges toward two large duffle bags on his porch and to his relief finds that they are full of cash. He stares at them and begins to cry, then takes his pistol out of his pants, switching on the safety. Walt returns home and announces to Skyler, "I'm out." Skyler realizes she can have her children back in their home. By the weekend, the White family and the Schraders happily gather around the table beside the pool. Holly is being pushed on her red plastic toy by her brother. Hank excuses himself to use the bathroom in the house. Sitting down on the toilet seat, he looks around on the toilet's tank for reading materials and after thumbing through a magazine, loses interest and picks up a copy of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. ''As Hank thumbs to the front of the book, he comes to an inscription in a familiar handwriting: ''"To my other favorite W.W. It's an honour working with you. Fondly, G.B." In a series of momentary flashbacks, Hank recalls his discussion of a case with Walt that concerned lab notes by Gale Boetticher , and Hank comes to the realization that Walt is Heisenberg. Credits Main Cast * Bryan Cranston as Walter White * Anna Gunn as Skyler White * Aaron Paul as Jesse Pinkman * Bob Odenkirk as Saul Goodman * Betsy Brandt as Marie Schrader * RJ Mitte as Walter White Jr. Supporting Cast *Laura Fraser as Lydia Rodarte-Quayle *Jesse Plemons as Todd *Steven Michael Quezada as Steven Gomez *Michael Bowen as Jack *Kevin Rankin as Kenny *Mike Batayeh as Dennis Markowski * Antoinette Antonio as News Reporter * Morse Bicknell as Declan's driver * Russ Dillen as Ron Forenall * Chris Freihofer as Dan Wachsberger * Craig Nigh as Asst. U.S. Attorney * Patrick Sang as Gang guy * Scott Ward as Public defender Trivia *The name of the episode is also the name of one of Walt Whitman's poems: "GLIDING o'er all, through all, Through Nature, Time, and Space, As a ship on the waters advancing, The voyage of the soul--not life alone, Death, many deaths I'll sing." * The entire cast appears in this episode. Jonathan Banks (Mike) appears briefly as a corpse in Walt's trunk and Bob Odenkirk (Saul) appears in his office, without any speaking lines. * This is the second episode to feature a large time jump. The second season finale "ABQ" features a several week jump as Walt heals from his surgery. * Continuity error: Todd's uncle refers to the 10 prison murders as being more difficult than the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. However, bin Laden was killed on May 2, 2011, and the episode presumably takes place in 2010. Vince Gilligan admitted this was a mistake. * The painting Walt is focused on is the same painting Walt gazes upon in the hospital in the episode "Bit by a Dead Bee" in Season 2. * The lyrics of "Crystal Blue Persuasion" are used here as an obvious reference to the blue-tinged methamphetamine produced during that montage scene, but songwriter Tommy James has stated that the "crystal blue" refers to the crystal lake in the Book of Revelation and "persuasion" to James becoming a Christian. It was written in 1969. * Gale Boetticher gave Walter White that copy of Whitman's Leaves of Grass in the episode "Sunset" (White was shown reading that book when he received a call from Hank). The book was also shown in the episode "Hazard Pay" when Walt was unpacking his belongings (he grins when he sees the book). * Walt owns David Reynolds’s 150th anniversary edition of the 1855 Leaves of Grass which, strangely enough, does not include Gale's favorite Whitman poem, "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer". * The ricin Walt plans to use on Lydia was the same ricin of which he hid in Madrigal. * This episode features several 'easter eggs' from the entire series, including: ** Walt seeing the fly on the table. ** The painting Walt claimed to have seen before. (Last seen in Season 2, episode 3.) ** Lydia mentions the line, "We're gonna make a lot of money together." The same exact line Tuco said in Season 1. ** Towards the end of the episode, when Walt and co. are sitting on his patio, before it shows them talking and Jr. strolling Holly, it features the same exact filming pattern as seen in several episodes of Season 2 due to the flashforward with the Pink Teddy Bear. Videos Inside "Gliding Over All" Making of "Gliding Over All" Featured Music *'"Pick Yourself Up"' by Nat "King" Cole and George Shearing *'"Crystal Blue Persuasion"' by Tommy James and the Shondells *'"Up the Junction"' by Squeeze es:Gliding Over All Category:Season 5 episodes Category:Breaking Bad episodes